“Left Behind traumatized a generation.”
When I heard this said recently, I laughed, thinking of the terrible films, and badly written books of the ’80s and ’90s during millennial fever. End times was big business (still is), making millions off Y2K. Decades of wrong prophecies and predictions, yet everyone from Hal Lindsey to John Hagee, to the Lahaye/Jenkins two-man book mill, seem to get a free pass, while they rake in millions.
Then, I realized, people were traumatized, thinking they might be left behind, while their loved-ones were raptured away. When Y2K passed, and another round of end times predictions were proven wrong, I learned that the popular end times model – dispensationalism – was based on a foundation of sand, not anything written in the Bible (e.g. see End Times Fiction and Last Days Madness). Nor was it the only end times interpretation in Christianity, and not the historical dominant one until recent decades. The dispensational eschatology includes an eclectic array of touchstones: rapture, blood moons, red heifers, third temples, and a variety of things that violate the words of Jesus and the apostles. I’ll put all that aside for today, and return to the decidedly real fear of being left behind or your airline pilot vanishing.
Where does the Bible speak of this rapture? The word is never used, but trusty AI claims these verses: 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, Matthew 24:36 and Luke 21:36. Apparently, AI is not real good at reading the Bible, because only one of these even remotely sounds like a rapture (in Thessalonians), but only if you don’t read the whole passage. It’s not the left behind doctrine. In fact, Paul is telling his readers what will happen to them (more on this another time).
Key principle #1 of biblical comprehension (or reading of anything, for that matter) is answering these questions: Who is the audience? Who is the writer talking to? Is there any compelling, obvious reason to interpret the verses any way other than what it plainly states?
Key principle #2: What do other related biblical verses state?
Keep these in mind.
So where does this leave us? Well, it brings us to, Luke 17, where we find the verses always quoted as the foundation to the left behind/rapture doctrine. Even people not familiar with Christianity probably know these (verses 34-36):
“I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.”
This is it, isn’t it? Interestingly, it doesn’t state which of these, if either, people are believers. But wait, back up a few verses for context:
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.“
Jesus is not speaking of believers. “Destroyed them all” and “fire and sulfur rained down” on them are dead giveaways. Then, after the “taken” verses, we find these two rarely read sentences:
“Where, Lord [are they taken]? ” they asked.
He replied, “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.”
Taken to where there are dead bodies. Where the vultures eat them.
This isn’t rescue. It is judgement.
Matthew 24:39–40 parallels what we read in Luke where again “taken” is explicitly tied to destruction, and a pattern of the wicked being taken is seen in Proverbs 2:21-22 and 10:30.
How did the rapture/left behind belief become so popular in modern times? It’s a long story, which Robby Gallaty outlines here.
It is a belief, but not a biblical one, and it should be left behind.
